MARMARA UNIVERSITY

ATATURK FACULTY OF EDUCATION

DEPARMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

LINGUISTICS
DİLEK UYGUN GÖKMEN
FINAL PROJECT
(OPINION ESSAY)

FF REPEATER

EZGİ BÜYÜKDAĞ 101016102 3-A

Gmail:
ezgibuyukdag1997@gmail.com

2019-2020 ACADEMIC YEAR / SPRING SEMESTER

 LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

Linguistics examines a language in terms of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and

neurolinguistics principles and concepts. Having knowledge about these features of the
language enables us to have information about the society in which language is spoken. In this
essay, I will mention about how research findings in the fields of Sociolinguistics,
Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics can help language educators develop more efficient
and effective language teaching methods.

Firstly, when we examine the research findings in terms of sociolinguistics, we come

across gender, ethnicity, social classes and geography. It is very important for a language
teacher to have knowledge of these issues because they provide information about where and
how the society speaks. For example, the student is expected to produce an appropriate
language in social contexts such as ordering in a restaurant, going to a job interview or
apologizing when a mistake is made. To achieve this, a language teacher should have a grasp
of the social context of the language she teaches, and develop and use teaching methods such
as task based or content based and communicative language teaching.

In another aspect, every language varies by geographic region. A language teacher

should know these language variations well. Thus, she/he can teach students the correct
accents and introduce other accents. For example, if we teach English as the second language,
we need to speak with American or British accents accepted by a large part of my society and
teach these pronunciation features. In addition, a language educator is expected to have the
knowledge of how sounds are produced, because only in this way, she/he teaches students
how to use their tongue and their lips while producing a sound. The teacher develops and
uses methods like audiolingual. When students learn a new language, they need to compare
the culture they have in their mother tongue and the second language. Therefore, the teacher
must recognize the culture of the second language and engage the student to discover the
cultural similarities and differences between the two languages. For this reason, the teacher
can give a reading text about the culture of the second language in the course content, ask the
students to write essay or ask them to discuss about it. While doing this, it can use the Whole
Language method. Besides, the language educator should have information about how gender
differences reflect on the language to teach the student how to use the language of men and
women, the grammatical structure and vocabulary used for men and women.
 Secondly, psycholinguistics is the area of linguistics that deals with linguistic
performance (how we use our linguistic competence) in speech production and understanding.
Teachers should have knowledge of what will happen in the human mind when we read,
write, listen and speak in order to help the individual activate cognitive processes.
Psycholinguistics gives information about the level of readiness of the individual to learn
language physically and mentally. Thus, language educators decide which language teaching
methods to use. For example, Total Physical Response and suggestopedia methods have
generally been developed in the beginner level and language teaching of young learners. At
the same time, psycholinguistics reveals factors such as learning styles, intelligence,
personality, and motivation that affect the student's learning. Language educators with this
knowledge take care to use different learning styles together in SLA and to provide
educational materials suitable for students' ages and personalities.

In another example, Psycholinguistics gives information about the cognitive and

emotional processes that students negotiate in mother tongue and second language
performance such as Krashen's Input, Affective Filter and The natural order hypothesis. The
language educators draw a road map for themselves to grasp and produce the language in the
SLA through this information. It is necessary for language teachers to know the speech errors
in order to prevent the errors in SLA. The teacher should know when and how to use Top-
Down and Bottom-Up models and involve these models in the lesson plan. In addition,
language educators should know the language processing concepts such as Semantics
Priming, Parsing and Late Closure Principles. They can give students listening tips by using
this information.

Finally, in terms of neurolinguistics, the teacher needs to know how language is

presented in the brain. It is a significant skill for teachers to know where the language we
read, listen and write is stored in the brain. Linguistic abilities occur in the left hemisphere of
the brain. With this information, the teacher decides how to put the word and grammar
knowledge from short-term memory into long-term memory and what techniques and
methods to develop.